You are here

Karma Wellness Water - not so vegan

I recently found this vitamin water in my grocery store, and was excited about the fact it is apparently vegan (labeled as such). However, after drinking about 1/2 of it I start going back through the ingredients and notice it contains cholecalciferol. I'm like, wait...isn't that D3? How is this vegan if it contains animal derived vitamin D?

I've contacted them and they've responded only to say they take my concern seriously. When they didn't respond further, I posted on their facebook page only to have them say, "you contacted us by email - let's keep this dialogue going via email." Scared, perhaps, that others might get savvy to the fact their product is not even vegetarian when they claim it to be vegan?

huh, that's interesting. FWIW, there is vegan cholecalciferol now, but I figured it was only in the form of special supplements, not something easy/cheap to get for fortifying foods.

I'd guess that the company themselves didn't know about D3 not being vegan. You'd think they'd have to know their own product to try to make the vegan claim, but a similar thing happened with (I think it was) Annie's dressings and a few personal care product companies a number of years ago, where their products were vegan or did "not contain any animal-derived ingredients," yet contained honey, propolis, or royal jelly. ... and you'd think those would be fairly obvious.

Maybe they were taught by the same teachers I had in the 60s who told us that insects are not animals. Like they're a whole other creation or something. And yet yeast was classed as "a single celled animal." So according to that, you could eat honey, just not on bread. Or something.